How to earn free Uber rides

Speaking at least from personal experience, Uber rides have become a fairly regular occurrence and it seems everywhere you look, app-based services in general, have become people’s preferred method of taxi transportation.

Uber, specifically, have a number of interesting partnerships that allow you to save money on your journeys. With that in mind, I thought I would highlight a couple of these ways today, as well as explaining a unique way of earning valuable points every time you travel – with no extra cost or effort required.

Barclaycard

There are actually 2 separate parts to this offer, although they both work by adding and selecting a Barclaycard, as your method of payment.

Get a free ride of up to £20

The first deal is for first time Uber users. If you haven’t ever gotten around to setting up an Uber account, or perhaps you have family members who have never joined, this is a good incentive to do so.

You can access this free ride by clicking on the ‘Payment’ section within the app. At the very bottom of the screen under the ‘Promotions’ section, there will be an option that says ‘Add Promo/Gift Code’.

Use promo code BARC20 for your free £20 first ride.

Get a free ride for every 10 trips you take

For me, this deal is the pick of the bunch.

To be honest, there are always decent deals available for new Uber users, but offers for regular Uber users, that can be used multiple times at that, are few and far between.

As long as you use a Barclaycard as your chosen method of payment, you will receive a free 11th ride, up to £15.

What’s especially good about this deal, is that there is no minimum spend required for the previous 10 rides. If your usual Uber journey is a short £8 hop, your reward will still be the same free £15 trip. This offer can be repeated as many times as you like!

Here are a couple of useful points regarding this offer:

You can use any personal Barclaycard

Your rides will be automatically tracked within your Uber account and you can view your progress towards your free trip there too.

The free trip must be used in the UK

However, you can accumulate your 10 rides with Uber both in the UK and abroad

If your free trip costs more than £15, you’ll just pay the balance.

The free trip can be used on any Uber rides product (apart from UberEATS and UberTAXI).

You can find out more about this offer on the Barclaycard website here.

Both of the offers for new and regular customers expire on 31st December 2017.

HSBC Premier Word Elite MasterCard

Well here is a benefit you don’t see mentioned very often. In fact, I only stumbled across it accidentally by browsing the Terms and Conditions of this card.

Via the HSBC World Elite MasterCard that was introduced last year, you will receive a £20 Uber promo code every time you spend £500+ on airline tickets using your card.

This benefit would appear to be repeatable and the wording on the HSBC website implies this can certainly be used by existing Uber customers.

This needn’t automatically sway your decision of which card to use to book your airline tickets. Remember the American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Card (full review here) offers double Membership Rewards points on travel purchases made directly with the airline.

It is, however, a useful perk to be aware of, especially if you are a heavy Uber user.

How to earn points/miles every time you travel with Uber

To be perfectly honest, besides the great promo codes I’ve listed today, there is another reason why Uber is my go-to taxi app. They have a great partnership that allows me to earn extra miles/points every time I travel with them.

Back in 2015, Starwood and Uber teamed up to allow Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) members the ability to earn Starpoints from their Uber journeys. Despite a fairly recent devaluation of the earnings rate, this is still a great deal.

Now I’ve gone on the record saying I view Starpoints as the most valuable points currency around and am fiercely protective over my balance. (Although of course, that may change once the true impact of the Marriott merger on the SPG program is revealed).

Starpoints can be redeemed for free nights at Starwood/Marriott hotels worldwide or converted to any one of 29 different airline frequent flyer programs.

That being the case, I always value all opportunities to collect extra Starpoints, this Uber partnership being a good example.

This is the way it works:

Everyday: You will earn 1 Starpoint per $2 spent with Uber.

During a stay at a Starwood hotel: You will earn 2 Starpoints per $1 spent with Uber.

A couple of useful bits of information about this deal:

You can earn bonus Starpoints on up to $10,000 of spend with Uber per year.

You must have stayed at any SPG property at least once since the start of the calendar year to be eligible for this deal

To earn Starpoints you must first register and link your SPG and Uber accounts via this link

Although the earnings rate is not life-changing, you may be just short of a redemption having taken out the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card (full review here) for example, and these points will help you to reach the required amount of points to ‘cash out’.
At the very least, these small amounts of Starpoints will keep resetting the expiration date of your points.

Verdict

There is something in these deals for everyone. For those looking to truly max out the miles and points/savings potential here – hopefully, all of you – here’s how you can triple dip!